


Safer With You

by masterroadtripper



Series: Best We Can [13]
Category: Newsies - All Media Types, Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: But anything the newsies do will be underage regardless, F/F, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Implied/Referenced Sex, M/M, Period Typical Attitudes, Period-Typical Homophobia, just briefly mentioned, mentioned underage drinking, nothing explicit at all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-08
Updated: 2020-06-08
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:20:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24599668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/masterroadtripper/pseuds/masterroadtripper
Summary: Jack and Charlie are boyfriends, Katherine and Sarah are girlfriends in a time when it was dangerous and potentially life-threatening to be caught in such relationships.  How the four of them ended up pairing themselves up and fake dating to keep each other safe.
Relationships: Crutchie/Jack Kelly, Sarah Jacobs/Katherine Plumber Pulitzer, Spot Conlon/Racetrack Higgins
Series: Best We Can [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1555765
Comments: 1
Kudos: 35





	Safer With You

Jack couldn’t help but smile when he saw a little note with Katherine’s handwriting tucked into the mail slot of the Lodging House that morning as he was running down the stairs. Bundled in so many layers he felt like a snowman, Jack took the time to pull off his glove with his teeth so he could open the note. Beside him, Charlie looked over his shoulder with a smug smirk.

“Guys looks,” Charlie called up the stairs, “Katherine sent Jack a note!”

Jack took the time between his boyfriend’s hollar and the resounding whoops from the top of the stairs to glare at the blond-haired boy beside him. He knew it was all good-natured though. The longer that the rest of the guys believed that he and Katherine were still dating, the safer he and Charlie would be in the end. Katherine, Race and likely Spot were the only people that knew the true nature of his and Charlie’s relationship and that was just fine. It was unfortunate, but it was also better that way. It was better for everyone that way.

“Jack’s gots a girlfriend, Jack’s gots a girlfriend,” little Patch shrieked in glee, racing up beside Jack and almost slipping on the ice on the street in front of the Lodge. Jack steadied them with an arm around the shoulder followed by a good-natured hair ruffle - carefully avoiding jostling the eye patch strap. As much as Jack loved Patch, he’d see their eye once and had very nearly lost his supper. It wasn’t fair to Patch that Jack was a little skittish around some things and the kid didn’t need any reason to damper their unbridled enthusiasm about life.

“Do youse gots a girlfriend Crutchie?” Patch asked, looking over at Jack’s best guy with an innocent smile. Usually, when Jack saw that look cross Patch’s features, he knew that they were up to something. But not today. He knew that it was true innocence.

“Aint gots me a girl yet,” Charlie replied, “how ‘bout youse? Gots a dame youse gots youse eyes on?”

“Ewww,” Patch said, sticking their tongue out, “girls gots cooties!”

Just then, Les ran past them, tagging Patch’s arm and shouting, “you’re it!”

With a smile, Jack watched as the two younger newsies ran off into the snowy morning, shrieking and laughing as they slipped around on the ice. With Patch having run off, Jack tugged the letter from Katherine out of his grey jacket pocket and unfolded it, reading through the letters and letting them form words inside his head.

> _Dearest Jack,_
> 
> _By the time you are reading this, my father will have left for Buffalo. I wanted to extend an invitation to you and Charlie to join me and a friend for dinner this evening. Let me know if you are planning on coming and I hope to see you after evening selling._

With a huff of confusion, Jack handed the paper to Charlie for him to read before stuffing his hands into his pockets and looking up at the sky. He hadn’t been back to the Pulitzer residence since the strike and usually met Katherine in significantly less formal settings like bars, pubs or delis. It was easier for both of them. Jack could keep up appearances and Katherine didn’t have to be attached to anyone. She’d said many times that that was not her cup of tea. Jack appreciated that.

“Kath wants us to comes ta ‘er da’s house?” Charlie whispered once he’d finished reading it. Passing over the paper, Jack took it and stuffed it back into his pocket.

“So...we’s gonna go?” Jack asked, looking over at his guy and right into his endless blue eyes.

“Up ta youse Jack. I’m fine wif it though,” Charlie replied with a shrug. Calm and collected as always, Charlie looked back at him with a massive crooked grin as he continued walking ahead of him.

“Okay. I guess is not the end of the world,” Jack said, gently stepping through a pile of snow and towards the Gates of The World, following in Charlie’s footsteps.

* * *

“You can do this, okay?” Sarah said, holding onto Katherine's upper arms and looking into her eyes. Her brown eyes were darting around her father’s dining room that they were currently standing in.

She knew that Katherine was terrified. They’d talked about this night for a couple of weeks at least. Jack and Charlie were Katherine’s best friends and while Katherine said that they deserved to know the truth, it was dangerous to say it out loud. But Sarah had argued that this presented the perfect situation because it could create cover stories for all four of them.

Jack and Katherine briefly dated. It was not like it was exactly a secret, and she had heard all about it the first time that she had come over for supper. Katherine’s father lost the key to his tight lips after a couple of glasses of scotch and supposedly still held quite the grudge towards his daughter dating the infamous Jack Kelly. While Sarah knew the truth about her relationship with Jack, she’d made it quite obvious that her father simply didn’t need to know about her personal life any longer.

Sarah had heard lots about Jack, Charlie and the newsies boys. They were a huge part of Katherine’s life and Sarah recognized that. She just wished that she could meet them formally one day and now that she’d finally talked Katherine into inviting Jack and Charlie over for dinner, she could plainly recognize that her girlfriend was working herself into a panic.

“It’ll be wonderful,” Sarah reassured her, “and besides, Jack and Charlie love you. Nothing wrong will happen.”

“They’re in the same boat as us,” Katherine muttered to herself before reaching up and smoothing her hair back from her face, “they’re the same as us.”

“Exactly,” Sarah said with as much conviction as she could muster.

Just seconds later, she heard the doorbell ring and Katherine’s eyes went wide again. Swallowing and cocking her head in the way that Sarah meant she was being brave because she knew she had to, Katherine muttered something that Sarah couldn’t catch before heading towards the door.

With a little time alone, Sarah adjusted her dress and made sure that it was not obvious that she had been...significantly not in the dress for a period of time between leaving her father's house and now. She had no idea how she looked, but she wanted to portray a good outer appearance.

Sarah thought she remembered Jack from when she was younger and worked at her father’s deli. Now, going through school and working towards becoming a nurse, she spent less time around the deli and never crossed paths with the working boys that her father served just before lunchtime with the leftover food that was unwanted and just thrown away. As a kid, she was always amazed at just how much those boys could consume. That and how young some of them were. If her memory served her right, she could remember a young Jack Kelly - the wide-eyed brown-haired boy that followed the boy in the blue around, step for step. Though, she doubted that he remembered her at all.

Sarah was easy to forget. She saw herself as pretty darn average. Medium brown hair, brown eyes, not all that tall, she looked a lot more like her late mother than her father. But by some other-worldly coincidence, an extremely pretty reporter had come by her father’s deli to spend a lunch hour with the working boys sprawled across the dining area tables. Waltzing into Sarah’s life in a flurry of pink and orange, she and Katherine had hit it off immediately.

It had been strange at first, when she realized that Katherine was dating a young man by the name of Jack Kelly - the famous union organizer, who, along with his friend Davey and the rest of the scrappy newsboys had managed to bring the entire city to a halt just a month prior. Though, Katherine had quickly explained that they were simply both doing it to prevent questioning. Her from her father, Jack from the rest of his boys. She didn’t elaborate at the time, but after a few more months of increasing intimacy and emotional bonding, she learned that Jack was enamoured with his childhood best friend and fellow newsboy. Sarah understood immediately.

“Sarah,” she heard Katherine say from behind her.

Whirling around to face the voice, she saw Katherine standing next to two boys. One - Jack, Sarah assumed - was wearing a blue shirt underneath a grey vest and beige pants. Though from what she saw briefly during the one lunch hour she’d spent at her father’s deli recently, he had cleaned up for this occasion. Same with the smaller blond boy with the grey eyes and crooked smile. While his clothes seemed to fit a little large on his frame, he wasn’t as dirty as Sarah bet working boys could get.

“This is Jack and Charlie,” Katherine said, pointing each of them out, in the right order that she had assumed, “and boys, this is Sarah...my...umm...girlfriend.”

Even though it wouldn’t be appropriate, Sarah wanted to kiss Katherine at that moment. She was so proud of her for telling that to these two boys that she obviously dearly trusted. And, watching the two boys look at one another with a smile before the blond one with the crutch laced his fingers with Jack’s, Sarah knew that they were doing the right thing, inviting these boys here tonight. With the simple motion of holding hands, she watched the tension in both of their shoulders loosen and wondered if that was what she and Katherine looked like when it was just them.

“It's so lovely to finally meet you properly Jack and Charlie,” Sarah said, before motioning towards where she’d set out the food they’d cooked that afternoon after letting the chef go home early, “you must be hungry. Lets eat.”

Sitting and getting everyone served up, Sarah watched as Katherine finally got less and less tense, more and more open and could see the easy camaraderie that she’d built up with Jack, much closer to a friend than to a romantic partner. She was glad they had each other and that they had someone to lean on like that.

After eating and a couple of hours of easy talking and light drinking around the fireplace, Katherine finally turned to Jack and Charlie and said, “Jack, I know that your boys still think that we’re still dating, but Charlie, would you be okay with them thinking that you and Sarah are dating?”

They’d discussed this at length. How it would be safer if each of them had a partner of the opposite sex to be seen in public with. They could do things together a lot easier and be a lot safer together. At first, it was the last thing that Sarah had wanted to do, but the longer she thought about it, the more sense Katherine’s argument made. But never once did Katherine pressure her and Sarah loved her for it.

“So...youse wanna dates me jus’ like Jack’s pre’endin’ ta dates Kath?” Charlie asked like he’d never once considered this scenario.

“Yes Charlie. If you’re okay with it. It would provide all of us the protection and deniability that staying apart could never provide,” Sarah argued, looking from Charlie to Jack and back again.

Both the boys looked at each other and it was almost like they were having a silent conversation with just their eyes. Sarah wondered if someday, she and Katherine would be able to do that. Perhaps with time.

“I finks its a real good idea Sarah,” Charlie said, “Is a real good idea.”

* * *

“Crutchie’s got a girlfriend?” Race shouted into the bunkroom that night once Charlie and Jack got home. Leave it to Race to blurt it out. It was usually Jack’s most effective way of breaking news to the guys on a large scale. Tell it to Race and let the boy with the cigar blurt it out in shock. It was truly hilarious and worked every single time.

“I know its a real big surprise aint it that I managed ta finds me a dame,” Charlie said with a sarcasm that Jack now recognized was him hiding his disappointment or shame over something.

He knew that the boys would tease Charlie about his bum leg preventing him from getting a date and he knew that it was something that messed with his boyfriend’s head. Because he had Jack and he’d always have Jack. That wasn’t going to change. Not anytime soon, if Jack had anything to say about it. But it wasn’t that they could just say that to the boys.

As Charlie was dragged off into the sea of newsies that were jostling him and celebrating his success, Race pulled him aside and whispered, “he’s gots a girlfriend? What ‘bout youse?”

“Aint leavin’ me behind,” Jack whispered back, “keepin us both safe. And our girls safe too. Sarah is Katherine’s friend.”

“I knews it,” Race said, getting really close to Jack’s face before pulling back, “I knew it.”

Jack wasn’t going to question exactly what Race thought he knew, but at least this revelation of his had caused Race to run off into the throng and leave Jack to his own thoughts for a little. Besides, he knew that Race wasn’t going to do anything bad with his information, and knew how important discretion was, especially in his and Spot’s situation.

That evening once everyone was sleeping, Jack climbed down off his bunk and slid into Charlie’s, pulling the covers over the both of them and wrapping his arms around the thin torso in front of him. Charlie wiggled back into Jack’s embrace and whispered, “youse sure this okay?”

“Youse ‘nd Sarah?” Jack asked.

“Yeah,” Charlie replied, turning over his shoulder and pressing his winter-chilled nose into Jack’s collarbone.

Pulling him close, Jack said, “Is all ‘kay wif me Charlie. Is keepin’ them girls safe and keepin’ youse safe. I couldn’t be happier.”

“M’kay,” Charlie said, nuzzling closer and as Jack felt Charlie’s heart rate even out against his chest, he smiled.

They would be okay. Everything would be okay.

**Author's Note:**

> 1) This was entirely inspired by me rewatching Captain America, The First Avenger this afternoon and thinking about Steve and Bucky taking those girls out to the fair and (since I'm a Stucky shipper as well) wondering if those girls were lesbians that they were double dating for a reason. Then...this story just popped into my mind and I wrote it in an afternoon. 
> 
> 1) In this version, Sarah Jacobs is not Davey and Les's sister, but the daughter of Jacobi (of Jacobi's) and changed her last name to be "more American" to fit in better among her peers. 
> 
> 2) Patch is an OC newsie and their story is explained in Find a Way, the 11th work in this series.


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